In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) business environment, informal collaboration isn’t just inadequate, it’s a risk. Strategic Relationships Solutions (SRS) replaces ad hoc coordination with a structured, systems-based approach rooted in relational contracting. Our framework drives alignment, adaptability, and measurable performance, ensuring collaboration directly facilitates the delivery of needed outcomes. In complex programs, collaboration isn’t a soft skill, it’s a strategic enabler of results.
Our approach is not one-size-fits-all. It’s a structured, adaptive framework that enables sustained collaboration across a program’s lifecycle. Key elements include:
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- Shared purpose and aligned outcomes
- Joint governance and decision-making
- Adaptive performance and incentive models
- Sustainment and continuous improvement mechanisms
Here’s how we implement it:
- Lay the Groundwork Early: Most collaboration breakdowns happen before contracts are signed. We embed the systems approach from day one, during planning and procurement:
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- Outcome-Centric Planning: Defining success by outcomes through facilitated engagement, predictive analysis and strategic micro-industry analysis
- Strategic Fit Partner Selection: Prioritizing strategic alignment, and collaborative competency in proposal evaluation and vendor selection
- Dynamic Basis of Payments and risk-reward sharing framework: Designing flexible compensation models that adapt over time and drive innovation and continuous improvement
This early alignment sets the foundation for a strong working relationship.
- Co-Create the Collaboration Framework: Once the right partners are in place, we co-create a fit-for-purpose framework, including:
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- A clear shared purpose and defined joint outcomes
- Team-based governance outlining decision rights, escalation procedures, and mutual responsibilities
- Integrated enterprise planning, joint enablement and risk management, and continuous improvement protocols
This becomes the “operating system” for how collaboration functions, structured but agile.
- Sustain it with a Collaboration Management Office (CMO): Collaboration isn’t a one-time event. It requires sustained enterprise level leadership, facilitation, and continuity. The CMO becomes the glue that holds the collaboration together, anchored by the system we co-created with the enterprise stakeholders.
The CMO ensures:
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- Effective Facilitation and coordination of the working of the joint management framework
- Ongoing collaboration performance tracking and alignment
- Structured issue resolution and joint escalation
- Sustained stability despite leadership or organizational changes
At SRS we help organizations move from reactive to proactive, from transactional to relational, from fragmented to unified execution.
Ready to move beyond ad hoc collaboration? Contact us today at Relationships@srscan.com